In Fuzzy Color

Jessica Cottis has always had a hypersensitivity to sound. As she walks into the cafe at the British Film Institute cinema to meet me, she is acutely aware of little noises—like the man at a table on the right tapping away at his laptop keyboard. She describes this sound to me with a harsh burst of white noise from her mouth. Even as we speak, the sound of a passing motorbike outside the building causes her to stop mid-sentence and wince. “It’s kind of a pest,” she tells me. But if so, it’s a pest that has helped her to become one of Britain’s leading young conductors, with appointments at the London Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Opera House, and the LA Philharmonic—and that’s just this season. Born in Australia to a military attaché father, Cottis spent her childhood on bases, the sounds of sirens ringing in her ears. At three years old, she started piano lessons—from her mother, at first—and by the age of 25 was playing organ professionally, having studied in Paris with Marie-Claire Alain (once the most widely recorded classical organist in the world). But in that year, the onset of carpal tunnel syndrome ended her performing career. After a brief hiatus, she enrolled in conducting studies at London’s Royal Academy of Music and has never looked back. On the day we met, she had just returned from wielding the baton at Prague’s 60th anniversary Kocian violin competition.